iOS 8 beta 1 release notes in full

Updated on Jun 3, 2014

We have now included the full iOS 8 beta 1 release notes below this article with known issues and workarounds for each problem where possible. When the beta 2 update arrives we’ll be sure to update our readers.

This year we are likely to see developers trying to access the iOS 8 beta 1 release notes right after Apple’s keynote, although we could see some problems if you try to download the update right away thanks to there now being well over 6 million developers. Last year, we saw broken pages within the members area thanks to a rush of developers trying all at the same time.

Apple can only handle a certain amount of demand to their website at once, so any issues expected to take place will be short lived. We expect that iOS 8 beta 1 will be available to download today, but the link can only be accessed from within the member control panel for official downloads. This will also include the list of notes for iOS 8 beta 1, although again this is for developers that have paid a yearly fee after being approved by Apple.

We will feature screenshots of the iOS 8 preview during Apple’s keynote at WWDC 2014 and a few articles on what new products and services get announced. The screens will reveal new APIs and features available to developers once the Dev Center returns after an update expected tonight, although be warned that if a small percentage from the millions of developers all try to access the dev portal at once then it could slow up page loading times like last year.

You will find the iOS 8 beta 1 release notes on this page once they go live within the developer portal, so make sure you visit the social channels for Product Reviews or this page later today after Apple’s keynote. We won’t expect the iOS 8 beta 1 to release for iPad straight away, and this would follow a pattern of only the iPhone getting a beta to start with just like previous versions. Future betas will bring iPad support.

Check back later as this story is developing. It’s not clear how much will change with iOS 8 vs. iOS 7, although we can’t wait to bring our readers hands-on screenshots and further details in the coming days.

Here are the full iOS 8 beta 1 release notes:

Notes and Known Issues
The following issues relate to using iOS SDK 8.0 to develop code.

App Store – Known Issue
Links to Developer websites from an apps developer page are broken.

AVCapture – Known Issues

The API returns incorrect values in some cases.

Use of the AVCaptureDevice method rampToVideoZoomFactor:withRate: will fail.

Use of the new constant, AVCaptureISOCurrent, will result in inconsistent ISO values (as observed on the ISO property) if setExposureModeCustomWithDuration:ISO:completionHandler: is called repeatedly.

In some configurations, the maxBracketedCaptureStillImageCount property on AVCaptureStillImageOutput will yield incorrect results.

Backup – Known Issue

Certain apps may crash on launch consistently if they came over from a Restore from Backup.

Workaround: Delete and re-download the app.

Bug Reporter – Known Issues

The switch in Developer Settings to hide Bug Reporter is not working.
Workaround: Remove it from the Notification tab in Notification Center settings.

The Bug Reporter icon does not appear on the Home Screen on iPad.
Workaround: Open the app from the Notification tab in Notification Center settings.

Camera connector – Known Issue
When attached, the camera connector is not offered as an import option.

CarPlay – Known Issues

After using Siri, audio quality goes to 24KHz regardless of where it was originally set.

CarPlay may crash when pressing the Back button when in Now Playing.

When using the knob only, the highlight can move off screen but the scroll position of view doesn’t follow.

The Now Playing screen is missing the Back button in the top-left corner.

CloudKit – Known Issue
Clients sending multiple simultaneous record update requests to the same zone in the private database may encounter CKErrorZoneBusy errors.

Workaround: Clients should send update requests for a given zone one at a time. In addition, they should handle CKErrorZoneBusy errors by retrying with an exponential back off.

Contacts

Note
The Address Book UI people picker has been changed for iOS 8. A new mode with new API has been added where the app does not need access to the user’s contacts and the user will not be prompted for access. A temporary copy of the selected person is returned to the app. See ABPeoplePickerNavigationController.h for more details.

In this beta, you have the choice of using either the new mode or the old mode. The old mode will be deprecated in a future iOS 8 Beta, so you should migrate to the new mode as soon as possible.

See the new PeoplePicker: Picking a Person or Property sample project demonstrating usage of the new mode.

Extensions – Known Issues

openURL does not work from an extension.

When Extension with UI is killed, it relaunches and is not dismissed.

Certain types of media, such as those synced from iTunes, are not editable in the Photos app.

Sharing extensions are enabled by default.

Sharing extensions display the name of the project instead of the name of the target.

If a Sharing extension or an Action extension hangs, it may be necessary to kill the hosting application.

Using xpc_service_set_attach_handler to profile app extensions for keyboard does not work.Workaround: Run your app extension in Simulator, then trigger the Keyboard extension to load and attach to the running instance (for example, com.thirdparty.foo.keyboard (123)) from Instruments’ target chooser.

Sometimes Sharing or Action extensions are not updated properly after enabling or disabling.

Workaround: Dismiss the Share sheet and relaunch it.

During a debug session, extensions may time out before loading.

Action extension view controllers do not support full-screen presentation.

Passing NSExtensionItem or NSItemProvider instances to UIActivityViewController does not work.

Action extensions do not animate smoothly when dismissed.

FaceTime – Known Issue
FaceTime does not work properly in landscape orientation.

When using the document menu, make sure to log into iCloud to properly enable selecting iCloud Documents to return a UIDocumentViewController; from there, you may enable your File Provider extension.

File providers may hang when importing files.

File Provider extension will not load if changes are made to an existing file provider on device.

Workaround: You need to either reboot the device or delete the app and reinstall it.

File SystemNote
The file system layout of app containers has changed on disk. Rather than relying on hard-coded directory structure, use the NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains function or the URLForDirectory:inDomain:appropriateForURL:create:error: method of the NSFileManager class. See Accessing Files and Directories.

iCloud Documents & Data created with iOS 8 Beta will be deleted from the servers at some point during the beta period.

Information downloaded and not evicted from the device will remain on device and will re-sync after the data wipe occurs.

The UI for managing iCloud Documents & Data does not show the documents and data for iOS 8 Beta and OS X v10.10 Developer Preview. It only shows the documents and data synced with previous operating systems.

Known Issue
In some cases, signing into iCloud can take up to two minutes.

iTunes Store – Known Issues

Opening iTunes Radio URLs from the iTunes Store music grouping page display a page that asks you to upgrade to iOS 7.

The shelf is not displayed on first sign-in or first launch.

Workaround: Relaunch the store from the App Switcher.

Keyboards – Known Issues

In some cases, you may need to restart an app to get third-party keyboard input to register.

If an iPad is restored while in landscape, it may end up with an offscreen keyboard in certain views.

Workaround: Reboot the device.

Custom Keyboards do not have Network Access even after setting the RequestsOpenAccess key to YES in the plist.

Deploying a third-party keyboard multiple times may cause the system keyboard to render incorrectly or go blank.

Workaround: Kill the hosting app or reboot the device.

The requestSupplementaryLexiconWithCompletion: method does not return any lexicon entries.

Keychain – Known Issue
Keychain Access developer APIs may not work in Simulator.

Localization – Known Issue
There are a number of strings that will display in English for people running the iOS in other languages. Known areas of concern include, but are not limited to:

Find My iPhone/iPad/iPod
iBooks in Hindi is in English
Many strings in the Camera app
Locations in Messages
Apple Dictionary untranslated for French (Canada) and Traditional Chinese (Honk Kong)
Family Sharing Request Dialogs
Calendar notifications
Error dialogs
Time units in Videos and Music
Adding events in Mail
Safari search and privacy strings
Photos
Setup assistant
Predictive typing
Voice Memos
Units in Health

Location Services – Known Issues

When Location Services is turned on, the device’s current location is used to recommend relevant apps on the lock screen.

In this beta, this happens whether or not the App Store is enabled for Location Services.

Workaround: To disable app recommendation on the lock screen, turn off Location Services.

The CLVisit class incorrectly declares the coordinate and horizontalAccuracy properties as read/write.

Apps using visit monitoring that are denied location authorization via Settings may appear to continue using location when they are not.

Visit monitoring may continue if an app is uninstalled while it is monitoring for visits.

Lost Mode – Known Issues

A device doesn’t display the Lost Mode message in the lock screen if the device was locked at the time it was put into Lost Mode.

Workaround: Reboot the device.

After remote wiping a device and logging into the same (@icloud.com) iCloud account, the Lost Mode lock screen is displayed and the device cannot be unlocked.

Mail – Known Issues

Sometimes Mail crashes when replying to an email with an attachment.

On iPad, trying to add a contact via a Suggestion Banner causes Mail to hang.

Workaround: Quit and relaunch Mail.

MapKit – Known Issues

MKMapItem called with -[MKMapItem url] that have no URL return “http://(null)” when the should return nil.
On iPad, tapping on “Points of Interest” can cause Maps to hang.

Double height status bar does not always dismiss for phone and FaceTime calls.

Tapping a Maps pin during a call causes a hang.

Bringing up a contact card in Mail during a call causes a hang.

Phone call relay uses Bluetooth, when it should be using Wi-Fi. Since not all devices have the necessary BT support, this may fail on some hardware.

Phone call relay sometimes results in poor audio quality.

Sometimes the FaceTime Audio icon appears when FaceTime Audio is not available.

Photos – Notes
Back up your photo libraries before enabling iCloud Photo Library by:
Importing to your Mac using iPhoto
Importing to your Mac using Image Capture
Enabling iCloud Photo Library will not add photos/videos that have been synced with iTunes to the cloud.

Known Issues

The ability to automatically optimize device space is not enabled in this beta.

“Save to Camera Roll” button in a Shared stream doesn’t work.

If you turn off iCloud before disabling iCloud Photo Library, synced photos are still present on your device.

Workaround: After signing back in to your iCloud account, turn iCloud Photo Library off and then back on.

If you turn on iCloud Photo Library while an iCloud restore is in progress, your initial upload will not happen until the restore completes.

When using iCloud Family, both iCloud Photos and My Photostream are enabled.

After restore from iCloud backup, modified photos may show unmodified thumbnails.

If you reach your iCloud quota, there is no way to add or delete data within the Photos app.

Items deleted from the Recently Deleted album don’t sync to other devices.

Slow motion clips that have been trimmed sync to other devices as a gray thumbnail.

iCloud Photo downloads stall when a device is idle for a long period of time.

Workaround: Sync resumes when the device wakes up.

If both iCloud Photos and Photostream are enabled, duplicate photos are displayed.

iCloud Photo Library does not upload Photos synced from iTunes.

When uploading large libraries, users may encounter a stall when syncing.

Workaround: Reboot the device.

iPhoto for iOS will not launch on iOS 8 Beta. Launching Photos.app will migrate your iPhoto edits to the iOS 8 Photo Library. Make sure your iPhoto for iOS data is included in your device backup.

PhotosUI – Note
PHContentEditingController protocol methods may be called on background threads.

Reminders – Known Issue
When you select Edit in a list of reminders and then scroll, reminders in the list are no longer editable.

Screen Capture – Known Issue
QuickTime Player X is unable to connect to iPad Air devices for screen capture.

Settings – Known Issues

Settings sometimes crashes upon addition of a third-party keyboard.

The screen brightness slider in Settings does not work.

Workaround: Use Control Center to adjust the screen brightness.

When signing out of iCloud, the account will actually be signed out, but the UI will not correctly reflect this until the user goes out of iCloud settings and back into it.

iTunes Wi-Fi Sync does not work.

Sometimes Settings shows an iCloud Drive/iCloud Documents incompatibility dialog and will not let you press OK.

Workaround: Wait a couple of minutes and then press OK again.

You are unable to use the “Forgot Apple ID or Password” dialog on your device.

Workaround: Reset passwords from appleid.apple.com.

Setup – Known Issue
Updating iCloud settings screen may appear to hang during setup.Workaround: Some accounts may have an extra long lag. Wait a couple of minutes and they should complete.

Simulator – Known Issues

Logging into Game Center from the Settings app will result in an error: Unable to connect to server. The operations couldn’t be completed. (Cocoa error 4097.)

Workaround: Dismiss the alert and continue to log in or sign in through the Game Center app.

Apps deployed to CarPlay do not launch or display controls.

Changing keyboards in Settings > General > Keyboard requires you to relaunch your app before the new settings are observed.

The resizable iPhone does not work.

If a resizable device is being used in iOS Simulator, keyboard input will go to the width and height text fields if they have focus. If you want input to go to the hosted iOS app, you will need to use the Tab key to change focus away from the text field.

If you rename Xcode.app after having previously run it, Simulator stops working.

If you use Bluetooth to activate Siri and ask what song is playing, Siri fails to identify the song.

UIKit – Note
UILabel has a default value of YES for clipsToBounds. This differs from the normal UIView default of NO.

Known Issues

There is no publicly available way to customize the search key for a UISearchBar.

UIScrollViewcontentInset is not set correctly when pushing a navigation controller on a navigation controller in a UISVC.

Share sheets sometimes include the “Send to Shared Photostream” item when they should not.

If an app is using a xib as its main window and is launched in landscape iPad, the main window will have the incorrect dimensions, causing significant distortion and difficulty using presented view controllers. An app may have to be force-quit after presenting a system view controller to function again.

Workaround: Launch all apps in portrait before rotating to landscape.

WebKit – Note
Subpixel rendering is now on by default for all web content. Web sites or in-app web views with extremely tight design constraints may render differently. Solutions for each issue will vary, but use Web Inspector to adjust position, border thickness, and width or height of elements.

Known Issues

Applications that use Apache Cordova/PhoneGap are broken due to a bug that causes the window.navigator.userAgent object to become undefined when window.navigator is replaced by a pure JavaScript wrapper object.

If you pass NULL for the fqdn parameter of SecRequestSharedWebCredential as recommended, only the first domain in the entitlement is used.

SecRequestSharedWebCredential and SecAddSharedWebCredential currently only work on device, not in Simulator.